A character is holding onto a ledge or rope by his/her fingers. One by one, each finger loses its grip or someone or something peels them off manually.

The trope is often paired with a villain at the ledge stomping on their hands or peeling the finger off. When there isn't a villain around, another hero will try to grasp their hands. If Played For Comedy, the rescuer may themselves fall and have to be grabbed by an even stronger person.

InKing Kong (2005), Kong hangs briefly by his fingers off a cliff before being dragged down by the V-rex that grabbed his leg.

Sully and Randall's battle in Monsters, Inc. climaxes with Sully hanging off the edge of a door over a chasm, while Randall prepares to stomp him off.

Star Trek: Kirk gets thrown off the edge of the drill during the fight but manages to grab the edge and hang on. A mook tries to stomp him off, but Sulu stabs him just in time.

Mel Brooks's High Anxiety parodies this. In a climactic scene the protagonist (played by Brooks) has a slipping hold on a ledge until he is improbably hanging on by a single fingertip. Once he gets a morale boost from another character he manages to regain his hold and climb up.

In Blade Runner, Deckard is hanging from a rain-slick girder thingy, hundreds of feet above street level, with only his fingers (two of which were broken earlier by Roy).

Parker in Leverage does this on occasion. She also points this fact out when someone tries to overpower her.

Tested on Mythbusters, and was deemed plausible that you could support your weight by your fingertips for a short time, though if you wanted to be pulled up, help would need to come VERY quickly. It's notably one of the only times Tory had been hurt: he smashed his knee on a window ledge during the experiment and required stitches.

Castle: Beckett was hanging by a thread, only to get saved in the last minute by the other cops. She's very happy to be alive, as she later shows Castle with a rather passionate kiss scene.

Frontier Circus: At the climax of "Calamity Circus", the saboteur is left dangling by one hand from the trapeze, before slowly losing their grip and falling to their death.

Literature

Septimus Heap - Queste: Septimus is thrown over the edge into the Abyss surrounding the House of Foryx, but manages to grab a bridge stanchion. He is eventually pulled back up by Jenna.

Fiendish Freddy's Big Top 'O Fun, in the tight Rope Act. If you lose your balance, the acrobat grabs hold, and Freddy picks the fingers one by one. Although Freddy sometimes speeds up the trope by smashing the hand with a hammer.

Emergency! series: It's a relatively frequent occurrence, and just the occasion to deploy a turntable ladder truck or a jump pad.

In Danger Mouse, there's an episode where DM, hanging from a branch, has his fingers attacked by a nest of hungry baby birds who mistake them for worms.

Phineas and Ferb: at the end of the episode about a traffic cam, Phineas and the disc both hover on the edge of a split bridge. Candace has to make a choice to grab either Phineas or the disc.

In one of the climatic final episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Toph is barely holding on to Sokka's hand when Suki saves them by flying down with a stolen airship.

Family Guy: The Evil Monkey who lives in Chris's closet is thrown from the top of a skyscraper by an insane robot girl. He grabs onto a lege but his fingers lip off one by one. After the last one he falls, but is caught by Peter & Quagmire in a biplane just before hitting the ground.

The Looney Tunes short "China Jones" has Daffy hanging over crocodile pool after a trapdoor opened under him. The villain unhooks his fingers one by one.

The Animated Adaptation of Tintin in America has him lose his footing when moving from a window to another (to attack a bandit guarding his door). He manages to pull himself up. Note that in the comic, he just crossed the gap without incident.

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